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Tasty sausage rolls; all of which are full of sausage meat. Well worth the money

I like to keep sausage rolls in my freezer, particularly as I regularly have my family and friends over for buffets. However, many of the brands I have tried tend to be a mass of extremely dry pastry with a very small amount of sausage meat, until I tried Iceland Cocktail Sausage Rolls.

The sausage rolls are sold in a red 1.2 kg pack of approximately 80 for £2 and are advertised as being "a light puff pastry filled with seasoned sausage meat". What initially made me try this brand is that I've made numerous other purchases in Iceland and have found the majority of their reasonably priced products to be extremely tasty. There is a plate of sausage rolls on the front of the packet that look particularly appetising.

When you first remove the sausage rolls from the packet to place on a baking tray, they look particularly bland and unappetising. The directions Iceland provide for cooking are to pre-heat your oven at gas mark 6, or 200 degrees C or 400 degrees F. If you have a fan-assisted oven you need to cook at gas mark 4, or 180 degrees C or 350 degrees F, brush the sausage rolls with a little milk or egg and cook in the centre of the oven for 18 - 20 minutes until golden brown.

As like most sausage rolls, they smell absolutely delicious when cooking and my kitchen is filled with a gorgeous smell. I became quite hungry for sausage rolls when I started writing this review, so I've got some cooking in the oven right now!!

I find they don't take very long in my fan-assisted oven so I tend to take them out after about 12 minutes. I've never brushed them with milk or egg and they always come out looking golden and brown. However, you need to be careful and keep an eye on the edges when cooking as they sometimes burn.

There is a generous amount of sausage meat in each sausage roll and it doesn't run out when cooking. I've bought so many brands of sausage rolls that when cooked, have very little sausage meat remaining as the majority has spilled out onto my baking tray.

As for the important bit, the taste - I am of the opinion that these are the nicest sausage rolls I've eaten which pleasantly surprised me, particularly as they're only £2 for 80. The amount of pastry is just right and there's plenty of tasty sausage meat. Sometimes I find sausage rolls a little too spicy, but these are perfectly seasoned.

Now for the nutrition information and allergy advice:-

The great thing with these sausage rolls is they are not produced in an environment where nuts are present so are suitable for anyone with nut allergies. However, they contain gluten and soya.

Contains gluten and soyaMade in a production area where no nuts are presentNo hydrogenated fatsNo GM ingredientsNo artificial colours or preservatives

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Iceland Cocktail Sausage Rolls come in a large, mostly dark red coloured plastic bag. The front of the bag shows a plate piled high with the most delicious looking sausage rolls I have ever seen, and the rear shows nutritional information, ingredients list, dietary/allergy advice, storage & cooking instructions, advice that the packaging is recyclable and Iceland's quality claim together with their contact details.

Even though I'm not a great one for celebrating Christmas, for me it isn't part of the spirit if the sausage rolls are missing. I prefer to buy them as firstly I'm not the world's greatest pastry cook, and secondly I'm too lazy to make them - I just can't be bothered with rolling all those bits of sausage up, all the sealing, and everything else involved.

The bag almost bursts at the seams with 80 tiny bite-sized sausage rolls, and needs cutting open with scissors. Inside, each sausage roll appears to be perfectly formed and they truly are bite-sized.

I didn't have a baking tray large enough to cook all 80 sausage rolls at once, so I did them in three batches - I didn't know if I was going to get visitors unexpectedly drop in over Christmas, and if they did, I wanted to be able to feed them with something. Whilst the sausage rolls were cooking in the oven, a faint pastry smell was detected, though I couldn't get even the slightest whiff of anything resembling sausage.

On removing the first batch from the oven, I was delighted to see these beautifully formed, beautifully browned, very appetising-looking little sausage rolls. I left them to cool for a few moments, then sampled one while it was still warm.

The pastry was lovely and light, flaky and wispy, simply melting in my mouth as I closed my lips over it, having a lovely buttery flavour. As I bit into the sausage meat, I found that I had to chew quite hard as it was a little on the tough side - but, it had a reasonably good flavour that seemed beefy (despite pork rather than beef being listed in the ingredients). So far, so good! Once the sausage rolls had completely cooled, I sampled one and was pleased that the pastry hadn't turned into an unpleasantly greasy, chewy mass. The sausage meat seemed to hold a stronger, somewhat herby flavour that wasn't present whilst it was hot....but it still tasted beefy to me and was still a little tougher than I personally like.

I had two visitors over Christmas, and they were very impressed with the little sausage rolls from Iceland - more impressed than I was, even though it would be wrong to say I disliked them.

Because I'd cooked so very many, they couldn't be eaten all at once by either me or my visitors, and that was a good tester to see how the quality was once they were a day old.

On Boxing Day I had a few cold for my lunch, and the quality hadn't deteriorated at all.....they were exactly the same as they'd been the day before.

Considering these are sausage rolls made from flaky pastry and I note that one of the ingredients is pork fat, they aren't too unkind in the calorie and fat department. Of course they are high compared to a more healthy snack, but for sausage rolls, they are comparatively respectable.

I probably would buy these again as they are extremely good value for money at just £2 for 80 sausage rolls, but for me I think it would be just a Christmas thing in the future. They certainly weren't perfect - mainly because of the tough pork sausage meat which tasted of beef - but they were more than adequate. Another plus side is that after having eventually scoffed most of them myself, I was pleased that there were absolutely no lumps of gristle present at all - for me, that is a major advantage.